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We're pretty sure at this point that the California Environmental Quality Act does not apply to itself. (www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3395). But we're still not quite sure whether CEQA applies "in reverse." Does it require developers to consider not just their projects' effects on the environment, but also the potential effects on their projects from environmental hazards like landslides, earthquakes, or rising sea levels? By appealing the same case that concluded, "CEQA does not apply to CEQA," the California Building Industry Association (CBIA) is hoping to resolve that issue once and for all. And if it doesn't , then we might have to go back to actually planning Of all the bizarre feedback loops built into CEQA, the idea that the law might apply to itself is certainly one of the weirdest of all. The First District Court of Appeal knocked that idea down last summer in California Building Industry Association v. Bay Area Air Quality Management District , 218 Cal.App.4th 1171, by ruling that the Bay Area air district's significance thresholds are not subject to a CEQA analysis. But in so doing, the First District ducked the other bizarre CEQA question we're all facing today: Namely, does CEQA apply "in reverse"? CBIA appealed the First District ruling to the Supreme Court – which took the case primarily to resolve that issue. "CEQA-In-Reverse" simply means this: We all know that CEQA is supposed to apply to a project's impacts on the environment. But does it also apply to the environment's impact on the project? That is, if a project would place people in the way of harm because of a pre-existing environmental problem – or, more to the point, a potential future problem – does the CEQA analysis have to cover that? Do applicants have to mitigate that possible problem? Can projects be turned down on that basis? We all thought we knew the answer: No. In maybe the most important CEQA case in the last few years, the Second District Court of Appeal ruled in 2011 that CEQA does not require an analysis of the environment on the project. In Ballona Wetlands Land Trust v. City of Los Angeles (www.cp-dr.com/articles/node-3121), 201 Cal.App. 4th 455, the First District ruled that the CEQA analysis of the Playa Vista project near Venice did not have to include an analysis of sea-level rise, for the simple reason that sea-level rise isn't caused by the project. In Ballona Wetlands , the court specifically took the state to task for the language of CEQA Guidelines Section 15126.2(a), which said that if a project was proposed to be constructed on a previously identified earthquake fault – thus putting people in harm's way – the potential danger had to be addressed in the CEQA analysis. In concept, Ballona Wetlands makes sense. It's a pretty well-established constitutional principle that you can't make developers mitigate more than their fair share of the problems they create. So it stands to reason that they should have no responsibility for problems that they have nothing to do with. Except why would you deliberately put people in harm's way by building a project in a dangerous location? Surely, if there is any purpose to planning at all, it is to eliminate the possibility that people will be harmed or killed because a development project is washed away or crumbles to the ground because of an earthquake. Indeed, this was the reason why – in the end – Los Angeles County eventually won the infamous First English Lutheran Church case back in the 1980s. Sure, it was possible, as the Supreme Court said (at 482 U.S. 304), for regulation to create a temporary taking. But in the end, L.A. County prevailed because rebuilding the First English church camp in Tujunga Canyon wasn't safe. Concern for public safety was also why CEQA practitioners around the state were having trouble with Ballona Wetlands – it went against their basic understanding of why we do planning at all. Nevertheless, it appeared to be settled law – at least until the CBIA v. BAAQMD case came along and implicitly (though not explicitly) reversed it. We'll see what the Supreme Court does. So, on the face of it, the end of "CEQA-In-Reverse" doesn't make sense. But no matter what the Supreme Court says, the truth of the matter is that it's a perfectly reasonable position to take under CEQA. And it might remind us that we're fundamentally in the business of planning, not CEQA analysis. In California, we often use CEQA analysis as our default method of getting a developer to do something – as if we have no other way of doing it. (In this way, CEQA's kind of like redevelopment used to be – the catch-all tool that we think is required to solve absolutely all problems.) So if we don't want a developer to build a project in an earthquake zone, or a place where sea-level rise is predicted to have an impact, then the most obvious thing to do is hit the developer with a significant impact under CEQA and take it from there. But Ballona Wetlands is right in one sense: Sea-level rise or an earthquake fault isn't the developer's fault. So if we are going to stop a developer from building in those locations, we can't do it under CEQA. We have to use actual planning. There is, for example, the Alquist-Priolo Act, which permits local governments to restrict development around earthquake faults. As the ultimate outcome of First English reminded us, there's also public health and safety, which in that case – and many others – ultimately trumped the landowner's property rights. The public health and safety power also means that planners can use zoning – for example, to restrict housing development near sources of air pollution. Sea-level rise is a trickier question, because there is no existing law to protect against it and the extent of it is pretty speculative. This is why, with Ballona Wetlands on the books, local planners are anxiously awaiting the Coastal Commission's guidance on sea-level rise. But existing regulatory mechanisms – such as health and safety findings – might give planners an important tool to protect against sea-level rise. As California planners, CEQA drives us crazy. But it also makes us lazy. Because we're so afraid of how it works, we also tend to try to use it for everything. If "CEQA-In-Reverse" doesn't survive, that might actually be a good thing. Because it might force us to actually use planning in order to plan.

The end of redevelopment has never turned into a cash cow for the state, as Gov. Jerry Brown hoped back in 2011. And while the 2012 cleanup law – AB 1484 – has clarified the rules, cities are still losing most lawsuits against the state that seek to retain former redevelopment funds. That was the message from three lawyers at the Nossaman law firm who gave an update on redevelopment at the California Chapter, American Planning Association , conference in Anaheim on Monday. Overall, it was a tale that seemed to suggest everyone is getting less than they had hoped for – not only the locals but the state as well. "The amount of money -- the $1.7 billion that was gonna just come flying in to the state -- has not materialized," Nossaman lawyer Rick Rayl said. "The assets have produced a lot less than anyone ever thought. If you asked Gov. Brown, he might second-guess the whole decision. I don't think it has accomplished what he intended." AB 1484 created a much more constructive relationship between the successor agencies and the Department of Finance and in particular took the pressure off a possible fire-sale of real estate assets by authorizing successor agencies to prepare long-range property management plans subject to state approval. These plans permit agencies to lay out long-term plans for developing or selling former redevelopment agency assets in a way that will maximize value. Many cities have complained that DOF turns long-range property management plans are very slowly, but Rayl's colleague Jeff Stava said DOF is actually picking up the pace and getting faster and more responsive to successor agency requests. Among the other pending issues facing successor agencies: Disposition of some 180 lawsuits against DOF – most of which seek to permit the successor agencies to retain former redevelopment funds or real estate assets over DOF's objections. DOF has won most of these cases at the trial court level and the cases are only beginning to trickle up to the appellate courts. How to maintain a good credit rating for both the successor agency and the underlying city when $11 billion in redevelopment bonds have been downgraded to junk status. This is especially important as successor agencies begin refinancing bonds – a practice other taxing entities like but, according to Stava, many successor agencies are not motivated to undertake because the underlying city will only receive 15-20% of the benefit. Whether and how to spend proceeds from so-called "Mardi Gras" bonds – bonds issued during the hectic period in early 2011 when redevelopment agencies were trying to beat a pending deadline for dissolution. One legislative bill, SB 1129, would actually clarify this issue and allow some of the bond proceeds to be spent.

The SB 743 roadshow went to Anaheim over the weekend, where the Governor's Office of Planning & Research – along with Ron Milam from Fehr & Peers – faced an overflow crowd and probed deeply into OPR's proposal to dump traffic congestion as a significant impact under the California Environmental Quality Act. And the discussion showed just how much the OPR proposal is turning the CEQA's traditional assumptions about traffic on their head. The Sunday afternoon session at the California Chapter, American Planning Association , conference came only two days after a similar overflow session in San Diego on Friday . At that session, OPR's Chris Ganson and Chris Calfee acknowledged that their proposed CEQA Guideline amendments might override local general plans on the issue of traffic congestion. But the addition of Milam – one of California's sharpest CEQA traffic minds – gave the Sunday session much more depth in raising questions about how the new guidelines might work. Over the summer, OPR issued a proposed set of CEQA Guideline amendments that would replace level of service with vehicle miles traveled as the main tool to assess the traffic impact of plans and projects under the environmental review law. Since then, local government planners and traffic engineers have been worried that they will no longer have enough clout to extract traffic mitigations from developers. Much of the discussion on Sunday revolved around the question of induced travel created by additional highway capacity – and whether, under CEQA, additional capacity might actually wind up creating a significant impact, rather than serving as mitigation. Under the LOS standard, congestion can be a significant impact and so therefore additional capacity can be a mitigation. But under the OPR proposal, congestion can't be considered a significant impact, while big increases in VMT can be. So, if additional lanes mean freeflowing traffic, and freeflowing traffic induces travel, VMT might go up – and trigger a significance threshold under CEQA. One audience member posted this question: If the Regional Transportation Plan and the Sustainable Communities Strategy has identified the need for a widened road – and the plan-level environmental impact report is done – will project-level environmental review have to look at induced travel? "The simple answer," Milam said, "is yes." But both he and the OPR representatives emphasized that a VMT metric might drive lead agencies in the direction of adding either density or a greater mix of land uses as a mitigation measure to drive VMT down – and this may have some effect on congestion as well.  Regarding the fear that local governments have of losing leverage over developers, Milam acknowledged: "It's as if we're playing golf while taking our seven-iron away." But he added that lead agencies must take a much broader view about how transportation analysis will be changing under CEQA. "We've become dependent on LOS as a way to get ad-hoc mitigation," he added. "Traditionally we want to look through the one lens, LOS, which is largely a traffic operations metric. … What's happened with 743, is we're starting to balance the playing field by introducing accessibility, access to goods and services. Access is not a traffic operations metric … It's helping understand how efficient our networks are." Milam and Calfee both emphasized once again that local governments can still use their police power and their general plan policies to extract increases in roadway capacity from developers. Calfee emphasized that the proposed guidelines are still a long way from adoption. He indicated that based on the comments received at these and other forums, OPR will likely change the proposed guidelines. If the changes are significant, OPR will likely circulate them again informally – and after that turn the guidelines over to the Natural Resources Agency for a formal rulemaking process with yet more comment periods.

In recent weeks, we've seen a lot of moves that suggest it may be time to change the way California funds transportation, including the following: Board of Equalization Member George Runner has been touting a 21% cut in the gas tax as part of the "fuel tax swap" formula from a few years ago. A committee headed by former San Diego City Councilmember Jim Madaffer is looking at how to implement a mileage tax as an alternative to the gas tax. Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins has proposed  a $52 annual fee on most drivers as a way to raise almost $2 billion for road repairs. The gas tax isn't the only source of funds for transportation in California, of course. Local transit agencies and some local street and road repairs are funded by the sales tax on gasoline – not the same, obviously, as the gas tax. Most large counties have an additional sales tax on gasoline to pay for transportation and road repairs. But most of the state's big-ticket transportation projects are paid for out of the gas tax, and the buying power of that funding source has been in decline for decades. Typical of California public finance, the whole gas tax story is so convoluted it's nearly impossible to understand, primarily because of the "fuel tax swap" back in 2010, which increase the gas tax in exchange for reducing the sales tax on gasoline. But for all practical purposes the gas tax has not increased since the year that today's college seniors were born – 1994. (Yes, the tax has increased but only as part of a deal that reduced other taxes to maintain the pool of transportation revenue even.) Since then, the state has added about 7 million new residents. Yes, gas tax revenues have gone up in recent years. But hybrid engines and greater fuel efficiency has cut into the growth in gas tax revenues. The value of every sales tax dollar has dropped by 40% due to inflation. Taxable sales of gasoline dropped every year from 2005 to 2013, though it's since recovered. It's no wonder, then, that the state and its local governments still struggle to pave streets and roads and fund the long list of transportation projects that comes to Sacramento for consideration every year. And it's no wonder that the gas tax looks to be on its last legs. Though it's technically a tax on the purchase of gasoline, the gas tax has always functioned in effect as a user fee: The more you drive, the more you pay. And the gas tax has always been the financial foundation for the California freeway system. It was the passage of what was then known as the Collier-Burns Act in 1947 – which increased the gas tax by 50% -- from 3 to 4.5 cents per gallon – that funded the freeway system and helped California avoid toll roads in the postwar era. (Gas cost 23 cents a gallon at the time.) For most of the postwar era, the gas tax formula worked fine. But a wide range of factors – inflation, the rising environmental and labor costs of transportation projects, and better fuel mileage to name just a few – have conspired to undermine the gas tax as a stable funding source. Policymakers in California have known about this problem for a long time. I can remember back in the ‘90s running into Richard Katz – then the chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee – shaking his head. He'd just gotten pathbreaking California's electric vehicle law passed, only to realize that if it worked it would reduce the gas tax revenues he needed to move other parts of the transportation agenda. In case you haven't noticed, the federal government has had the same problem. Rather than raise the gas tax – or reduce transportation spending – Congress has been shoring up the federal transportation trust fund by borrowing billions of dollars every year from the federal general fund. So California – like other states and he federal government – is faced with a bunch of tough choices. Here are some of the things the state might do: Raise the gas tax – though this is both politically difficult and, for the reasons described above, an imperfect approach. (Among other things, the fuel tax swap has resulted in California having one of the highest gas taxes in the country.) Switch to a mileage tax – something that may have legs in California, since the main criticism seems to be that the government will know your driving habits, which is a Republican criticism rather than a Democratic one. Create some additional fee on drivers, as Speaker Atkins has proposed – though there might be some pushback against this as being an additional tax. Or, of course, live with the money we get now. This last one is tough but actually worth thinking about. The problem for both states and the federal government in recent years has been pretty simple: There's enough money to maintain the transportation system we have  or  build new transportation facilities, but there's not enough money to do both. That's why some mostly left-wing advocates have argued for a "fix-it-first" approach, on the theory that focusing on maintenance will mean the current system will be in better shape but sprawl will be discouraged because new facilities won't be built. Even conservative politicians, of course, like to be able to cut ribbons on new facilities, so "fix it first" may not have legs. But something has to give. The gas tax era is over.

A couple of weeks ago I heard a spiel by one of the founders of a new startup called Feastly , which is trying to pair up chefs with diners. Chefs wake up in the morning, go into their kitchen, prepare whatever they want, put out a call on the Internet - and if it's something you want to eat, you go to their house and dine. Feastly, in other words, turns every dining room into a restaurant.

I’ve lived in both cities. I’ve devoted most of my professional career to understanding the two of them. And, conflicted as I am about who to root for in the World Series, I’ll say this: It’s a great matchup because Los Angeles and Houston are so similar as urban places – the two largest cities in the American Sun Belt. And as a current Houstonian and former Angeleno, it’s worth saying that Los Angeles holds important lessons – good and bad – about our future. When I moved to Houston three years ago – after living in Southern California for thirty years – the thing that struck me more than anything was how similar its urban form is to Los Angeles. An enormous, low-rise city laid out on a grid across a gigantic coastal plane. Glued together by a highly developed freeway system. Punctuated by large job centers scattered across the landscape. Slowly realizing that maybe cars aren’t the answer to everything. And gradually rediscovering the underlying natural environment that gave rise to the city in the first place. Over time, I’ve come to see that even in non-physical terms, the two cities are similar. Demographically, this similarity is really striking. Both cities are about 40% Hispanic, and their metro areas have an enormous array of nationalities and ethnicities. The only big demographic difference is that, because it was traditionally a Southern city, Houston has a larger African-American population. But even in that case, what’s important is not the difference but the connection . Los Angeles’s black population migrated largely from Texas and Louisiana, and the connections back and forth are important. (In Walter Moseley’s Easy Rawlins novels, Easy lives in South-Central but grew up in the Fifth Ward.) As one of the westernmost historically black colleges and universities, Texas Southern draws more than its share of Angelenos. And among other ethnic groups, Houston is increasingly viewed as an affordable alternative to Los Angeles. Houston has the largest Vietnamese population outside of California, and the relationships among East Asian communities in particular is strong. Not long ago I spoke with a dentist and his wife of Chinese extraction who grew up in Los Angeles and then lived in the East and the Midwest. They settled in Houston because of the large Chinese population and the general view that, if they couldn’t afford to live in Los Angeles, Houston was the next-best place to be a Chinese-American. It’s a little facile too easy to say that Houston and L.A. are similar because they grew up as postwar auto-oriented cities. It’s important to understand that, at least at their core, both cities are older than you might think. Yes, they are the two largest cities in the Sun Belt. But they have been the two largest cities in the Sun Belt since 1950 , when Houston passed New Orleans as the largest city in the South. L.A. emerged early as a center of aerospace and manufacturing, Houston as a center of cotton trading and then energy. Both benefited greatly from World War II industrialization. Both are port cities, and in fact the expansion of the Panama Canal is likely to increase the competition between the ports. Both had – and still have – enormous freight rail infrastructures, which are deeply interconnected. (It’s not unusual for freight traffic in L.A. to get screwed up because of some snafu in the Port of Houston.) Nevertheless, it is true that they both boomed in the 30 years after World War II to become the poster children for Sun Belt sprawl, both good and bad. L.A. and Houston were carpet-bombed with basic, low-amenity suburban tracts in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Yet they have also been centers of urban innovation. When I was a young urban planner learning about “new towns,” everything I read kept leading me back to Irvine and The Woodlands, which are similarly innovative as master-planned communities. Even in baseball, the two cities were leaders of postwar suburban innovation. Dodger Stadium and the Astrodome – dating from 1962 and 1965, respectively – were hands down the two most important and innovative baseball stadiums built between the 1920s and the 1990s. These were the stadiums that led the way with exploding scoreboards, varied cuisine, and ample parking. (See Josh Stephens’s CP&DR review of a new book about Dodger Stadium.) As I learn more about this moment in Houston’s history, I am struck by the similarities with the Los Angeles I lived in during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The emerging world-class traffic problems. (The 610 Loop around The Galleria reminds me so much of the 405 on the Westside.) The dependence on traditional industries that may not be around forever. The struggles of a black-white city accommodating a wide range of emerging ethnicities, especially a fast-growing Hispanic population. The unaffordable housing. The gradual coming to terms with the idea that a world-class city must be urban, not suburban, in nature. And so what can Houston learn from L.A.? My takeaway is: Don’t wait too long to embrace the need to be a more urban place. For Los Angeles, the tipping point came in the ‘90s, when traffic got so bad Angelenos began to realize they would never be able to fix the problem with more freeway lanes. Since then, L.A. has embarked on the largest transit construction effort of any American city in the last 100 years. It will pay off in the long run, but in the short run traffic is still miserable, the transit oases are few and far between, and Angelenos are taxing themselves to death trying to get ahead in the process. So don’t get too far behind the curve – in transportation, housing, and diversifying the economic base. Oh, and by the way: I’m not really having a hard time deciding who to root for. The Dodgers are a great ballclub. But the Astros are the most exciting, fun young team I’ve seen in a really long time.

A local judge has ruled that the City of Dublin should have conducted an environmental analysis under the California Environmental Quality Act before placing a measure on the ballot that would permit development in an area previous protected under the city’s Open Space Initiative.

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Judge Sides With Developers On Preliminary Application Timing

As CP&DR has written repeatedly over the last couple of years, SB 35 is turning project-level housing review upside down, especially in the Bay Area. But by and large, SB 35 – which limits cities to ministerial review over housing projects in some circumstances – has been used to promote market-rate projects in upscale locations like Berkeley , Cupertino , and Los Altos . This isn’t surprising, especially since a precondition for SB 35 is paying construction laborers prevailing wage – an expensive proposition that usually requires a big revenue stream.

In the 1990s, Rick Cole presided over the update of Pasadena's general plan, which led to the development of one of the most recognizable transit-oriented developments in the United States (recognizable to planning nerds, at least): the Del Mar Transit Village on Los Angeles Metro's Gold Line. At the time, the city was a hotbed of New Urbanism thought, of which the Del Mar Transit Village was a prime example. Despite the high profile of New Urbanist ideas, and of the  Congress for the New Urbanism , Del Mar remained a relatively isolated example of the ethos and the aesthetic. In the ensuing decades, Cole moved on to serve as city manager in Azusa and Ventura (where he collaborated with CP&DR Publisher Bill Fulton), and in the past decade he served in the Los Angeles Mayor's Office and, most recently, as city manager in Santa Monica, from 2015 to 2020. The consummate Californian and longtime proponent of New Urbanist is now taking on a formal, national role, as the leader of the Congress for the New Urbanism itself. Cole official became CNU's executive director in May. CP&DR's Josh Stephens spoke with Cole about New Urbanism's influence on California, California's influence on it, and its prospects here and around the country now that it has gone from a radical upstart theory to a motivating force among many progressive planners, designers, and developers. Related CP&DR Coverage  New Urbanism Tag Train Moves New Urbanism Forward  Image credit: Brett VA via Flickr .

Subscribers -Log In to read the CP&DR Vol. 41 No. 1 January 2026 Report